


Thunder Follow Me

by cofax



Series: This is Not Wartime [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Apocafic, Bob - Freeform, F/M, This is Not Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The prisoners would go dig out more of the mountain now, and tomorrow they'd get up and do it again, and maybe Daniel wouldn't have to watch anyone die. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Thunder Follow Me

**Author's Note:**

> Posted January 2005.

There was a weight on his back. Heavy, punishing, pressing down, binding his chest and legs. Daniel opened his eyes.

 

He opened his eyes again: still nothing. Utter darkness. As if he were at the bottom of a well.

 

"Ja--" he began to say, and then he stopped, uncertain who he was calling for. There was something about Jack, some reason why Jack wouldn't be there. But his head ached, it was hard to think. Or breathe, with the weight on his body.

 

Daniel swallowed, grimaced at the grit in his mouth, the smell of dust, cold ash, and the faint odor of rot. He wriggled his fingers, and his right hand moved, touching sand, powdery chunks of some light stone, splinters of wood. Above his hand was--he twisted his arm with difficulty, reaching upwards--a hard, smooth surface, like a board or a desk. Whatever it was, he was under it, and that was what was squeezing him.

 

He tried his left hand next, flexing and reaching. He had more room there, and he moved his hand around, groping blindly, on the rough surface below him. The ground, or floor, or whatever, seemed to be made up of a great deal of debris, piled on top of something solid. Something sharp and irregular was pressing into his shoulder.

 

After a few moments his fingers closed around something familiar, something comforting. Thin, long, smooth--oh. A pen.

 

Why was there a pen here? He thought about it, or tried to, but his head hurt, and he was getting worried. Shouldn't his team be here by now? He must be offworld: wherever he was, this wasn't the sort of thing that happened to him on Earth --

 

_Oh._ He would have laughed, if he had any breathe to spare.

 

He wasn't offworld. Hell, he wasn't even in some remote corner of the globe, looking for Goa'uld artifacts. He was, god help him, inside Cheyenne Mountain. Janet was up top, working with the disposal crews--and surreptitiously identifying bodies when she could get away with it--and Daniel was on an excavation team, somewhere around level 12 of NORAD.

 

He wasn't sure what had happened; as his head cleared a bit, he tried to figure out where he was. The last thing he remembered, he had been clearing debris with Franks in one of the secondary tunnels, using his hands, shovels, and picks to pile chunks of concrete, charred papers, and twisted rebar into unsteady carts for transport to the surface. Franks had left him to go for water, and then--nothing.

 

There must have been a collapse of the workings, like the one last month. People had died, a lot of them, but the Jaffa didn't let them slow down, or bring in more skilled labor. Sindle didn't care about the safety of his Tau'ri prisoners: all he wanted was the Stargate, the sooner, the better.

 

God, it was dark. And--was it quiet? Daniel swallowed again, and tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, so he could listen. Nothing beyond his own pulse in his ears. Not even a whisper of settling debris. He must have been out for a long time, if the wreckage had stopped moving and the dust had settled enough for him to breathe.

 

Air. He was going to run out of air. Terror swelled, closing his throat, making his fingers scrabble on the floor. He wasn't claustrophobic, but this close space and complete darkness--he stilled his hands and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. Closing his eyes helped: if they were closed, he wasn't straining to see something that wasn't there.

 

All right. He had to assume nobody was coming for him. What was he going to do? First thing was to see if he could move. There was more room by his head than his lower body, maybe he could go forward. Daniel pulled his elbows in under him and pushed on them, shifting his body forward an inch or so. The board pressing down on him shifted some, but didn't drop as he moved. If he was lucky, it was braced on something, which meant he could crawl out from under it.

 

There really wasn't a floor here: his groping hands found not a smooth surface, but more rubble, concrete, tangled wires. But there seemed to be more room there, as if it were a small cave. Daniel fumbled around and found a piece of concrete that seemed secure, locked his hands over it, and pulled.

 

"C'mon, dammit..." He couldn't push with his feet, they were too tightly caught, but he could pull, and work his torso back and forth. After several minutes of this, stopping frequently to listen for evidence that the roof was going to collapse on him, he managed to free his entire body.

 

Now he was crouched uncertainly in a tiny space, no more than four feet high, and only a few feet across. He felt the wall: there was more rubble, what felt like part of a desk, some rebar... more of the same on the other walls. He was pretty sure he could move some of this, even without tools, but unless he went the right way, he was doomed. And--he felt his head gingerly--after getting bumped on the head, he had no idea which way was out.

 

Shit.

 

He couldn't sit down; there was nothing stable or flat enough to sit on, and if he did survive, he'd rather not die slowly from tetanus or septicemia.

 

Which way, which way? He pressed his head against the nearest concrete block, thinking maybe sound would travel better through denser materials. Nothing.

 

Well, going _any_ direction was better than staying here and slowly suffocating. And he had a 25 percent chance of picking the right one. He tried not to think of what would happen if he picked the wrong way. Eeny, meeny, minie--

 

_Don't be a dumb fuck, Daniel._

 

"Jack?" he whispered past dry lips. There was still no light. Daniel put a hand out, but touched only the hard edge of broken cement, something that might have been a staple-remover, a floppy disk.

 

_You're facing west. Which way was the tunnel going?_

 

"Umm." He stalled. His thoughts tangled in each other, tripping and falling.

 

_Stay with me here, Daniel. Which way?_ Jack's voice was sharper, if no louder.

 

"South, I think." Yeah, south. He could see Franks' mouth moving, see the shovel in his own hands.

 

_So turn left ninety degrees, and start digging. Nobody's coming in after you, you know that._

 

"So helpful," Daniel muttered, but turned obediently, and began to scrabble at the wall.

 

The terror went away a little when he began to move. It gave him something to do, and even if Jack stopped talking, Daniel thought sometimes he was still there. But it was dark, and close, and more than once Daniel forced his way into something he wasn't sure he could find his way out of. He pushed debris behind him as he went, and some of that was buried in falls from the roof. Often it was less like tunneling and more like caving, clambering over and through barriers made of broken desks and crumbled filing cabinets.

 

He fell a couple of times, slipping off an uneven surface in the darkness or having a brick turn under him. The second time he punctured his hand on a shard of metal. There wasn't anything he could do about that, so he kept going, wiping the blood on his shirt when his hand grew too slippery.

 

Pulling himself into another air pocket, a little larger than the last one, Daniel felt around for something to rest on. His groping hand touched cloth. It was soft, slippery under his fingers. Someone's shirt? He moved his hand, patting gently, and touched _flesh_. "Gah!"

 

He breathed deeply for a few moments, let his heart slow down, and put his hand out again. He didn't smell any rot; there must have been very little air in here after the attack. He touched the cloth again, followed it to an arm, and then a shoulder, a face, a woman's silky hair. Some civilian employee of NORAD, a file clerk or administrator. Her skin had dried, her body desiccated and withered, entombed in here with all her coworkers when the mountain fell down. No name, her family scattered if they'd even survived the strafing and bombings in Colorado Springs, no one to mourn her but an oxygen-starved archaeologist who was likely going to die very soon himself.

 

Daniel settled down a little closer to her, and wrapped his arms around his torso. He would keep her company for a while, before he tried to go a little further. He just needed to rest a bit.

 

_Daniel!_

 

"Just for a minute, Jack." Daniel leaned his head back against the wall.

 

They found him there asleep, when the Jaffa forced the reluctant prisoners back into the south line tunnel. Daniel didn't look at the dead woman's face when they pulled him out; he had seen enough dead bodies.

 

The Jaffa gave him the rest of the shift off and sent him back into the pit the next morning.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

The sun was just hitting the floor of the dusty crater when the Jaffa herded the prisoners together, staff weapons held at the ready. Three of the prisoners had attempted to escape the previous day, and this morning was the public retribution for their crime.

 

The three condemned men were stripped to their underwear and stood less than steadily in front of the small crowd, hands bound before them. Dickinson and Lewis had their heads down, skins of their bellies pale against their tanned arms and faces. Franks looked around, the rage on his face evident to Daniel even at a distance.

 

Behind the prisoners rose a vast pile of rubble, the disposal site where their bodies would be tossed, to be buried within the day by barrowloads of soil, shattered concrete, and wiring from the remains of the Cheyenne Mountain complex. This was the first time since the attack that their keepers had administered punishment so ritually. It was clearly meant as a lesson for the rest of them.

 

The wind picked up, making the perpetual dust dance along the line of laborers, settling on shabby clothing and the varied helmets of the Jaffa. Daniel closed his eyes, but Janet was beside him and he forced his eyes open.

 

"Followers of Sindle!" one of the Jaffa bellowed. From the snake-head helmet, Daniel guessed it was Brintal. "These men rejected your god and tried to escape! See how your god punishes such treachery!"

 

Daniel expected the speech to last longer, but that was it. Even the Jaffa were tired, he thought. At a gesture from Brintal, three Jaffa lowered their weapons and fired at the prisoners.

 

Franks died with more honor than Daniel had expected, refusing to either fall or cry out. Instead he staggered after the first blast hit him, and sank to his knees, fighting all the way. Dickinson and Lewis shrieked and collapsed, writhing on the bare ground. The second blast hit Franks in the face, and he pitched forward without a sound. The Jaffa didn't waste another shot on the other two, and they continued to twitch and whimper for several minutes.

 

Daniel didn't look away as some blood trickled onto the ground beneath the three bodies. Someone nearby was weeping. Two small hands pulled his right fist out of his pocket and uncurled it with surprising strength.

 

"Daniel," Janet whispered.

 

He looked at her finally, saw the tears on her face. And the anger. How could she stay angry?

 

_They shouldn't have died,_ a voice whispered in his ear, and maybe it was Jack, maybe it was Janet, maybe it was Franks, stopping by to visit on his way to wherever blowhards go when they die.

 

The prisoners would go dig out more of the mountain now, and tomorrow they'd get up and do it again, and maybe Daniel wouldn't have to watch anyone die. That would be nice, he thought, and looked back at the bodies on the ground.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

There was still a little soup left when Daniel entered the dining hall, and a few people sitting on the fold-out tables that always reminded him of third grade. He scooped the last of the grey goop into a bowl, grimacing slightly. Anne-Marie nodded at him and took the pot back into the kitchen to be washed.

 

Without Anne-Marie, Daniel didn't think they'd have lasted the first week. Through a soft voice and sheer force of personality she had imposed order on the hundred or so desperate, and hungry, prisoners; now, after a few bumps, there was a smoothly-operating system for food preparation and distribution. Which didn't mean that they all got enough to eat, and the menu was extremely limited. But no one was starving. Yet.

 

It wasn't late: Before, many people would have been just finishing dessert, drinking a last glass of wine while watching some television program, overseeing the kids' homework. Daniel realized that he'd probably still have been at the lab at this hour, finishing up a translation, consulting with Nyan on some point of arcana, or sharing a late cup of commissary coffee with Sam.

 

Damn, he missed her. Something of that must have shown on his face as he sat down next to Janet, lingering over her own chipped bowl. She raised an eyebrow.

 

"Sam," he said, and stirred his soup reluctantly. "I was just thinking about her." He took a swallow, and then another one. The last of the beef broth, maybe, with a few withered potatoes.

 

Janet sighed. "I miss her too." She scraped her spoon across the bottom of her bowl, and the sound sent shivers down Daniel's back.

 

"Do you know where she was, that last day?" he asked. Not hopeful, because if Sam had survived, where was she now?

 

"No," Janet replied, dropping her spoon into the bowl and pushing them both away. The lamp at the end of the table was running out of propane, and the flicker made the shadow of the bowl jump about on the dull green melamine table-top. "We didn't have any plans. I know she had that project she was working on, the mystery box from your last mission--"

 

"Yeah." 'Mystery box' was a glamorous way of describing a six by six by two-inch square of something, possibly plastic, with a single indecipherable glyph on the top and no other information. In a way, Daniel supposed it had saved his life, because the only reason he hadn't been in the mountain when the attack came was that he'd gone to an antiquarian bookstore in Denver, on the chance they'd have a reference that could help. They hadn't.

 

Sam was probably in the mountain that day, running tests, conjuring theories. He supposed he'd never know for sure.

 

"So," Janet said, her tone tentative.

 

"Hmm?" He swallowed the last of the soup. It wasn't enough, but there wasn't any more. He'd lost a lot of weight, and for the first time he envied Janet her small size, her compact and efficient body.

 

"Yasheka went out again tonight." Janet looked concerned, not without cause.

 

"She'll be okay. She's an adult."

 

She scowled. "It's too dangerous. She won't listen to me--"

 

"You can't stop her. Neither can I. And," he added, "I don't think we should. It's too important."

 

"Da--David, she's _sleeping_ with him!"

 

"You think she's prostituting herself? You think she's wrong? He _feeds_ her, and gives her clothes she shares with the rest of the women, and she gets information we need. And she's an adult. You couldn't stop her, and you shouldn't try." The soup in his stomach churned, and he swallowed hastily, forcing down the bile. What had he become, that he would let a girl sell herself for information, that he would _encourage_ it?

 

He didn't say anything more, because he knew this was far less about Yasheka--or even Janet herself--than it was about Cassie. Cassie, who had disappeared the day Janet was captured by the Jaffa, and hadn't been seen again. Janet couldn't bear the thought of Cassie forced to these choices. Nor should she, in a better world. But this was the world they were given, and--he could even hear Jack saying it, damnit--whatever it took to keep them alive, he'd do it.

 

Janet didn't answer him, and instead took her bowl to the kitchen and walked out, back stiff, feet oddly silent on the tile floors.

 

Several hours later, Daniel was on his back on the floor of the basement, holding a flashlight for Enrique as he mucked around in the guts of the boiler, when Yasheka came back.

 

"David?" Something jiggled his leg, and he craned his neck to see Yasheka's hand resting on his foot, her distinctive yellow bracelets knocking against the grey rubber of his sneaker.

 

"Yeah, um, we're kind of in the middle of this. I'll come find you in a couple of minutes?"

 

"Fine," she said, a little shortly, and padded off.

 

When he finished with Enrique, the boiler restored to its cranky self, he found Yasheka slouched on the stairway leading up from the front lobby, frowning down as she picked at her cuticles.

 

"Hey." He sat down a few steps above her, suppressing a groan. He missed comfortable chairs.

 

"All fixed?" she asked, in what was a pretty good attempt at a cheery tone.

 

He frowned. "You know, I haven't the slightest idea. Ask Enrique."

 

She nodded, sighed, and leaned against his thigh. He dropped a hand on her shoulder and shook her, just a little. "You okay?"

 

"Yeah," she replied. "Just tired." She yawned, and then sat up abruptly. "Okay, right. Stuff to tell you. He fed me, by the way," she threw Daniel a sly smile, and he grinned back.

 

"Anyway. Um, not much to tell, he was all about the farm his dad has back on Tildar, yada yada, how he thinks he'll make First Prime someday, all that. But then he said something about bringing me out permanent, when we're done."

 

Daniel closed his hand over her shoulder. "Done?"

 

She nodded rapidly. "Yeah, he said that when the dig is done they'll take the chappa--thingy--"

 

"--chaapa'ai--"

 

"--right, the chaapa'ai--and bring it down here. And then--" she cut off. Shook her head, didn't look at him, her braids swinging slightly. A door banged downstairs and Enrique came into the hallway.

 

"And then?" Daniel finally said, after Enrique had climbed the stairs past them, and gone off to bed in one of the overcrowded rooms on the second floor.

 

"And then, he said he'd try to bring me out. And he shut up, like he knew he wasn't supposed to say that much." For the first time, Yasheka sounded scared.

 

"Right. Okay." Daniel sucked in a breath, and another one. This wasn't news, he reminded himself. He knew what the Goa'uld were like, he'd seen Apophis order their deaths that day on Chulak so many years ago, he'd heard Teal'c's stories.

 

_But this is Earth,_ something inside him cried. _It's not supposed to happen here!_ Except he'd seen it, hadn't he? All those red blotches across the map in the briefing room, explosions as the gate dialed, Teal'c-who-wasn't-Teal'c shooting at him as he sprinted up the ramp.

 

Once, on PN7-356, they'd found a mass grave about two kilometers from the Stargate, outside a long-abandoned temple to a Goa'uld he'd never heard of. The villages within a day's walk of the gate were all empty, roofs collapsed and animals dead in their stalls. That ... had not been a good mission. They had all been silent on the hike back to the gate, and snappish for days afterwards.

 

_They'll kill all of us._ Bodies tossed into the pit the prisoners had so laboriously excavated, sealed in with the dead of NORAD and the SGC. Siler and Hammond and Sam, withered and dusty, and now Daniel and Janet and Anne-Marie to join them.

 

"Did Tenebar say anything else," Daniel whispered, bringing his head closer to Yasheka's. "Did he say _when_?"

 

She shut her eyes, paused, and shook her head. "No, nothing. Except--"

 

"Uh-huh?" Daniel loved Yasheka, truly: she was smart, and perceptive, and had an excellent memory. But her conversational style drove him _mad_.

 

"What does 'shalva' mean?"

 

Daniel caught his breath, loudly enough she turned to stare at him. "What did you say?"

 

"Just before I left, Jennek came by, and Tenebar went out to talk to him. I couldn't hear it, they were talking Jaffa," --for once Daniel didn't correct her-- "but they said that word a bunch of times. 'Shalva'. What's it mean?"

 

"Shol'va, it's Abydonian, an old term, originally referring to the son of the family who marries into a rival clan, and then expanded to a more general definition sometime after the settlement of Chulak, I think--" He was babbling, he couldn't help it. Dear god. He forced himself to shut up and answer her question. "It means 'traitor'."

 

"Traitor? Huh."

 

"Yeah."

 

She put a hand on his thigh. "David, are you okay?"

 

"I'm--I'm fine, really." And he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. "I'm fine."

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

The third time, Janet crawled under his blanket without a word, latched one hand onto his, and fell asleep immediately. Her breath whispered past his cheek. Daniel lay unsleeping for a while, stroking his hand up and down along Janet's too-prominent vertebrae. He woke to her hand between his legs, her mouth on his jaw. They squirmed together in the cramped darkness, barely moving, breathing quietly, and shuddered soundlessly to climax.

 

The second time, he went looking for her. Bingham had snapped that morning, his strict Christian upbringing overwhelming his caution in the face of Sindle's presumptions of divinity. Daniel was too slow to stop him, and when the gobbet of saliva hit Sindle's face there was nothing to be done. For Bingham's sake, Daniel didn't turn away when the Jaffa fired.

 

He found Janet inventorying supplies in the basement of Donner Hall after the evening meal. Janet was warm, known, _home_. She didn't comfort him, didn't wipe away his anger, but matched him, thrust for thrust, on the dirty basement floor. When he bashed his head against a carton of toilet paper she even snickered.

 

The first time was after the workings collapsed in October. Sindle refused to allow any rescue attempts until three hours later, so it was no surprise that most of those trapped six floors down were dead when they were found. Late that night, after the Jaffa forcibly removed them from the excavation site and sent them back down the mountain, Daniel went looking for Janet.

 

He found her behind the building, curled in on herself like a potato bug, shuddering in the shadow of the ornamentals. The blood on her hands was dry when he pulled her up, and he knew that some of it was hers. Her hands, like his, were scratched and battered, nails ripped from their frantic digging. There weren't enough shovels, weren't enough hands. Brenda De Martini's face had been unrecognizable, and Janet only identified her by the green bracelet she never took off.

 

Janet kept both hands locked on his, her grip bruising, until finally her breathing slowed and she straightened. It was too dark to see her face, but her head moved and he caught a glint from her eyes.

 

"I can't do this any more, Daniel. I can't." Her voice wasn't broken: it was tight with anger.

 

"You have to." Christ, listen to him.

 

"For the love of God, Daniel! _I can't help them!_ I can't help _anyone_!" Janet wrenched her hands out of his, her whole body shaking with emotion.

 

She'd raised her voice, and Daniel caught her by the shoulders to calm her. He tried to keep his voice level, but he heard it crack. He couldn't lose Janet too. "You _are_ helping. And you have to-- you have to stay alive. If you don't help, they'll kill you."

 

"_FUCK_ them."

 

Her voice was lower, but no less fierce, and Daniel couldn't help but laugh. Six weeks in this hellhole and this was the first time he'd heard her swear. "Yeah, well. Not really an option I'd recommend."

 

She sobbed in a breath, released it, and sagged in his hold, the tension running out of her. "God." She didn't resist when he wrapped his arms around her. "I just--I hate this."

 

"Me too." He didn't say anything more, just stood there with her. She was so small, shorter than Sha're, a lot shorter than Sam, and thinner than either after more than a month on the excavation. Her hair was caught back in a messy ponytail and it smelled of smoke and dust and blood, but he closed his eyes and rubbed his cheek against the top of her head anyway.

 

It was a mild night for October; a lonely cricket started chirping again and the stars shifted a bit before Daniel felt small hands lift the hem of his shirt and move up his back, smoothing across the bruised skin and aching muscles. When he pulled his head back and peered down at Janet, she shrugged and lifted an eyebrow at him, for all the world as if he'd challenged her medical judgment. "Don't try to tell me you don't need it too."

 

He put a hand to her face, rubbed his thumb across a dirty smudge that might have been a tearstain. "Then I won't." When he bent his head to kiss her, her lips were chapped and salty with tears.

 

There was nowhere to go with any guarantee of privacy, and they ended up on the ground, cramped between the ornamentals and the wall of the building. If either of them wept, it was too dark to tell, and the dirt stains were undistinguishable in the filth coating the rest of their clothes. After, Janet left first.

 

That was the first time.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

Daniel had stopped dreaming of his teammates. He should have been grateful; but instead he dreamed of gates, doorways, wormholes. A stargate so vast it blotted out the sky, and he knew if he could only reach it, set his weight and push through the event horizon--a fish leaping into the alien air and falling back into safety--he would be home. Safe among friends and steel-grey walls, in the world of burned Air Force coffee and recycled air.

 

But his feet were shackled, his hands bound; the ground was uneven under his feet. His unfamiliar comrades--alien faces all--struggled and fell in silence beside him. He staggered, fell: the wormhole evaporated.

 

Daniel woke in the darkness. There was frost on the dirty windows over his head. Janet stirred but didn't wake. There was a hitch in her breathing, a relic of the cough that had been plaguing her for weeks. Neither of them would say the words "bronchitis" or "tuberculosis", because naming it would help no one. There were no medical supplies to be had anymore; appealing to Sindle by way of Harriman gained them only two packages of aspirin and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

 

Daniel blinked at the ceiling and, from the corner of his eye, saw Jack squatting on his haunches between Daniel and the next mat. Jack wore his BDUs and cap; Daniel wondered which of a hundred memories he came from, tending a small fire on some random planet and arguing with Teal'c about the cultural value of women's gymnastics.

 

Jack's face was lit by a source Daniel couldn't see, a flickering unsettling light that hid as much as it revealed. He slapped his hands down on his knees and scowled at Daniel.

 

_Okay, it's time to get off your ass._

 

Daniel looked away. There was so much to be done, and so few who could be trusted. And Daniel had never been a leader, he was the snarky guy in the back pointing out the things the leader didn't want to know. He was the voice of compromise, or of compassion when needed. He didn't tell people what to do, he didn't give orders. That was Jack.

 

_Well, I'm not there, am I?_ Somehow Jack had moved to the other side of the bed, and he had his face right up in Daniel's, eyes sparking with anger. _And you have so been a leader, Daniel. Abydos ring any bells?_

 

Daniel glared at Jack in silence, but rolled out of the blankets, careful not to disturb Janet or any of the others. His subconscious was really making him pay for all those years of talking over Jack.

 

_What, you think I'm gonna show up and rescue you? You think Thor is on his way? Get real. The Asgard aren't coming!_

 

Which Daniel thought was kind of obvious, given how long it had been since the attack. But he didn't have a chance to snap back at Jack, because of course by the time Daniel was out of the room, padding down the cold hallway, Jack was gone again. Asshole.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

Before dawn the fields around the old boarding school were windswept and empty, cold and open. It had been a mild winter so far, for which Daniel was grateful, and the snow formed a crackling skin along the ground rather than the deep barrier he could otherwise have expected. Easier to get through now, and less likely to give him away later, if any of the Jaffa thought to look.

 

Getting out of the dorm was easier than he had anticipated; the real problem had been making sure Yasheka didn't try to join him after she told him where the blind spot in the Jaffa cordon was. After four months, the Jaffa had gotten lazy. Daniel wasn't about to complain.

 

There wasn't any safe way to do this; so Daniel just walked, as briskly as he could, out over the fields towards the fence line. There was a late quarter moon just visible over the trees, giving just enough light to guide him. He moved carefully, keeping an eye on the buildings off to his left, the large wooden house where Sindle kept himself and his guard warm on these cold nights. If Daniel were spotted, that's where the danger would come from.

 

There was nothing, though: no movement, no noise other than the faint crunching of his sneakers on the snowy ground. His toes curled miserably inside the sneakers as the cold soaked up from underneath. If only he'd known, that first day, that he'd need wool socks with him on his trip to Denver. His world was made up of if onlies.

 

A shadow passed overhead. Daniel jumped; when he looked up, he saw something small and uncertain fluttering against the stars. A bat, maybe? It swooped down closer, and he realized it was a bird, something tiny, with an orange head. What it was doing here, in winter, was beyond him. It landed on a bush and pecked at a withered berry. Daniel shrugged and trudged on; he was only a hundred yards or so from the cyclone fence.

 

He never reached the fence. At ten yards he walked into an invisible wall. The unexpectedness of it knocked him onto his ass, and he sat there stunned for a moment before scrambling to his feet, pants already wet with the snow. He reached out carefully, and yes, there it was.

 

A smooth, invisible surface, reaching from the ground as high as he could reach. He wasn't absolutely sure, but it felt near the top as if it began to curve inwards.

 

A dome. A fucking force field, probably over the entire complex. The bird was some fragile songbird trapped here months ago. There would be no escape over the fence. Time for Plan B.

 

Plan B involved a visit with the friendly local snitch. Which took a couple of days to arrange; eventually Daniel called in a favor from one of the Jaffa, who told him Harriman would be in the pit after the noon break, doing "inventory" for Sindle. Sindle was worried he was missing the cream of the Tau'ri technology the prisoners were digging out of the mountain: Harriman identified the good stuff for him, in exchange for food, hot water, and protection from his fellow human beings.

 

"I--I don't have a lot of time." Harriman looked nervously back towards the junction where the Jaffa were milling about during shift-change. "The Jaffa--"

 

Daniel grabbed his face and turned it back to face him. His filthy hands left muddy smears on Harriman's sweaty skin. "I need supplies, Walter. You're going to get them for me."

 

"I. But I can't--"

 

"I need a set of jumper cables, the heaviest set you can find. And a radio, one that will transmit on military frequencies. You understand me?"

 

Harriman blanched. "But I don't know, they keep a guard--"

 

"Listen to me, Sergeant. If you _don't_ do this for me, I'll tell Brintal you've got a contact with the Resistance."

 

Harriman's eyes widened, and Daniel made himself smirk. "What, you think they caught Franks by _accident_?"

 

"That was _you_? But Doctor Jack--"

 

Daniel slapped his hand over Harriman's mouth and leaned closer, using his mass and height in a way that he'd always loathed. "Listen to me carefully. It's _very_ important that you get this stuff for me. Do you understand?"

 

He waited until Harriman nodded before dropping his hand, and wiping the other man's saliva off against Harriman's jacket.

 

"A radio and jumper cables. I'll try."

 

"Fine." Daniel patted him on the arm and walked away, wishing he were more disgusted with himself. But Anne-Marie had fainted on the dig site yesterday, weak from cold and malnutrition. Janet suspected she hadn't been eating. They'd managed to hide her collapse, and Barry had spent the evening pumping her full of water and weak broth. Today she had the easiest job of all, carrying water to the work teams, but it had been a narrow escape.

 

They were running out of time.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

It was almost sunset when the gate finally came swinging up out of the pit, suspended like a great pocket watch from Enrique's complex series of pulleys and scaffolding. It spun, slowly, twisting in the spiderweb of cables, surging and swaying as Brintal shouted, as Harriman ground the gears of the bulldozer and the prisoners heaved against the lines, sweat dripping even in the cold air.

 

A high-pitched whine emerged from the bulldozer. Daniel winced for the clutch, and then it cut out. "Stop!" shouted Brintal, from atop a pile of rubble, and the prisoners slacked on the lines. The ratchets caught: the gate stayed where it was, in the air over the great hole in the earth.

 

Through the opening Daniel saw the sun resting on the edge of the mountain, serrated by trees, rockfall, and the torn remains of the iris. The Sun, not some alien star, shining on the rocks and pines of Earth; it was dislocating, overlaying the memory of hundreds of other planets on this one. As if this scene, with helmeted Jaffa and prisoners grunting in hard labor, wasn't Earth, couldn't be.

 

There was a flurry of activity as Enrique scrambled out on the lines to check some of the connections, and Brintal yelled at the prisoners to move around to the side of the pit nearest the trucks. Sixteen of them lined up with the cables in their hands. On Enrique's signal, riding it in, they slowly brought the massive thing over to the side, and even more slowly lowered it onto the flatbed truck waiting for it. The last few inches were covered without even a click as it sank into its place. The edges of the disk stuck out over the sides of the flatbed.

 

Daniel turned around, slightly dazed, and found Janet next to him.

 

"Weird, isn't it?" she asked.

 

"Yeah, I--weird is as good a word as any." He sighed as Brintal climbed into the cab next to Harriman. The engine turned over, sputtered, and finally started with a roar. As they watched, the truck rolled away, heading down the mountain, followed closely by several smaller trucks full of Jaffa.

 

The prisoners were loaded onto their battered bus shortly afterwards, and trundled down the mountain. Daniel and Janet were pressed against the right side window, which was glittering with frost. He scraped an opening and stared out at the trees and patchy snow going by. He'd begun to nod off, despite the bumpy ride, when Janet grabbed his arm.

 

The bus shuddered to a halt and two Jaffa leaped out, weapons ready. Daniel leaned closer to the window, glass cold against his face, and saw what Janet had seen, what had made the driver stop the bus.

 

There were people standing in the road. Shabby people, more than a dozen of them, some of them without coats or hats, were gathered around the bus. Six or so blinked in the headlights of the schoolbus, blocking the road.

 

The Jaffa waved at them, brandishing their staff weapons. Several of the people backed away, but two stayed where they were. An older black man in a tattered overcoat, and a white woman in a black cap pulled low over her eyes. She put her hands out to the Jaffa, saying something Daniel couldn't hear from inside the bus. She waved at the others, and one of the smaller ones--god, they were just _children_\--stepped forward, hands held up. The wind whipped snow into his face and he cringed, but held his position. Beseeching.

 

_Begging._ Daniel locked his hand around Janet's arm when she began to move. "No!" he hissed. Tenebar stood at the front of the bus, weapon in both hands, face grim. No one was to move.

 

The Jaffa yelled and when the beggars didn't back up, the Jaffa fired into the ground. They scattered to the sides of the road, and the Jaffa leapt back into the bus.

 

It wasn't over, though. As the bus began to roll forward, now less than a mile from the school complex, more beggars came out from the woods on either side of the road, and ran after the bus, shouting. It was like Cairo, like Bombay, like Sao Paulo. Hands and faces and people yelling, and the terror that that could be _you_, the fear that you could be lost out there.

 

"Oh, god, oh god, oh god." Janet had her hands over her mouth. Daniel tucked his head down between his shoulders and didn't think for the next ten minutes. Didn't think about the locals who had refused to leave, who had stuck it out when the power went and the Jaffa took their livestock and the gas dried up. Didn't think about the Jaffa salvaging parties, that seized everything even remotely resembling a weapon. Didn't think about how there was a force field over the complex and there was no _fucking_ way for him to help any of these people.

 

The beggars chased the bus to the school, shouting and slapping their hands against its sides, but were driven off by the Jaffa on guard at the gate. The bus rumbled through the gate and down the lane, and the shouts and cries of the starving Coloradans faded in the bitter wind.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

When they were disgorged into the yard in front of Donner Hall, it was full dark. The gate on its truck was nowhere to be seen. Prisoners moved slowly across to the hall doors, Anne-Marie already giving soft directions for dinner preparations. Daniel pulled Janet to the side, in the shadow of the juniper next to the door. She was still shaking with reaction, but when she spoke, she was all business.

 

"We have to go soon, Daniel."

 

Daniel grimaced. "I know. But we're all so tired, and it's cold. I _think_ we could afford to wait a few more days. They'll need our labor to set the gate up, and I don't think Harriman's told them that there isn't a DHD. They may spend some time looking for it before they realize they'll have to jury-rig a power source--" Daniel rolled his head uneasily against his stiff shoulders. His hands were torn, the calluses peeling where the ropes had removed layers of skin. He couldn't remember ever being this beaten down, suffering this weary ache that went all the way to his bones.

 

"But?"

 

Common sense told him they had more time. Sindle did nothing without due deliberation. But the half-dozen Jaffa on duty seemed more alert than usual tonight. There was Jennek at the edge of the light, standing tall with his staff at his side, dark hands flexing and loosening. Daniel's mouth went dry.

 

"Tomorrow. Let's go tomorrow night. I don't think we should wait any longer than that."

 

Janet met his eyes, her gaze searching. After a few breaths she nodded briskly. "Right. I'll tell the others."

 

Before she turned away, he grabbed her hand. "Wait a minute. I wasn't going to--it's--Janet, what about Cassie?"

 

She closed her eyes and looked away, out at the yard where the school bus sat, engine ticking as it cooled. Then looked back, her eyes dry. "Can we get to her?"

 

He shook his head.

 

"Do we even know where she is?"

 

Daniel shook his head again.

 

"Then there's nothing to say, is there?"

 

 

Daniel found Enrique in the common room after dinner, sitting slumped on the ugly green couch, his hands empty. Perry and Kat were playing checkers on the table in the corner, shoving the pieces around with the blunt ends of their fingers. There were a couple of other people gathered around the fire crouched low in the fireplace.

 

Pulling up a chair, Daniel bent close to Enrique. The other man peered at him, attentive through his fatigue. Daniel kept a wary eye on Perry in the corner as he said, "We're going tomorrow night. You good with that?"

 

Enrique had some influence with a small cadre of the younger men: teens and college students, mostly. Resentful, scruffy, and absolutely vital to getting everyone moving. "When?"

 

Daniel shrugged, stretched elaborately. "Late, I think, after midnight. We'll have to--"

 

There was a crash in the hall and Natalia stumbled through the door. She fetched up hard against one of the tables, her face anxious. She started to say something, but then two Jaffa came through the door and Daniel stopped paying attention to her.

 

The Jaffa hadn't come into Donner Hall since the very first night. The Jaffa generally left them alone, let the Tau'ri manage their own affairs within the confines of the dormitory and the dank cafeteria. But these two hadn't left the Tau'ri alone, instead they were looming in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame, closed helmets turning as they surveyed the large room.

 

"David--"

 

"You!" Both staff weapons dropped to horizontal.

 

Both weapons pointed at Daniel.

 

The lead Jaffa's voice boomed, echoing out of his helmet and bouncing off the walls of the room like the narrator of a bad Saturday afternoon horror movie. "Doctor Daniel Jackson of SG-1. You will come with us."

 

Crap. Daniel glanced cautiously around: no help to be found. Nine people in the room, and no one was about to face off with the Jaffa. Everyone had seen the way Franks had died. There would be no last-minute heroics.

 

He stood up, very slowly. No point in denying the name, and frankly it was blind luck he'd gone this long without being identified. "Okay, I'm coming."

 

The larger Jaffa--Brintal, he guessed, from the helmet--led the way out into the hall. The snake-crested Jaffa followed them, ignoring the pale faces and wide eyes of the prisoners in the common room.

 

More prisoners were in the hall: Yasheka by the kitchen door, Barry in the bathroom doorway. And Janet at the top of the stairs, one hand gripping the stair railing, face pale with shock turning to anger.

 

The Jaffa behind him shoved Daniel roughly, forcing him forward with the staff between his shoulder blades, and he staggered before turning to follow Brintal to the door.

 

Daniel met Yasheka's eyes, wide, brown, frightened, and between one step and another there was a sound he'd heard before, a sound he knew, a sound that was out of place. And then there was a crash and something knocked Daniel against the wall. He heard the sound again, but this time he remembered what it was. As Brintal crashed to the ground to lie twitching on the dirty linoleum floor, Daniel wondered where Janet had managed to get hold of a zat.

 

Silence filled the hall, followed by the thump-thump-thump of Janet racing down the stairs. "Daniel! Are you okay?"

 

He struggled up onto an elbow and pulled his foot out from under a twitching Jaffa leg. "Yeah, I'm fine."

 

"Good," she said, and nudged him closer to the wall.

 

Daniel drew in his feet and watched as Janet raised the zat again. "Janet--"

 

She shook her head. "It's too late, Daniel. They _know_." And as he watched, curled against the wall, Janet shot both Jaffa again. Twice. The bodies evaporated.

 

Daniel looked around at the dozen faces staring at him, at the closed front door. The dark windows on either side of the doorway reflected back no indication of the sudden fire of violence that had swept through the entry hall.

 

"They knew who I was," he said to Janet. She nodded, unsurprised. The zat was still in her hand, looking incongruously large. "Where'd you get that?" he asked.

 

Janet looked down, ignoring the rising voices around them as people finally began to react to the scuffle. She tightened her hand and brought the zat back into standby position. "Had it for a couple of weeks now." She met his eyes blandly; Daniel decided he didn't need to know what she'd risked to get it. And he was hardly in a position to complain, given how much he'd hidden from her over the past few months.

 

He wanted to stay where he was, on his ass on the floor; it had all happened too fast. But he couldn't--they were falling free now, pulled downhill by the gravity of Janet's decision, and if they didn't do something they were going to go _splat_ at the bottom.

 

"Right then," he said, and let Janet pull him to his feet. "Yasheka, who's on watch out front, and when is their shift up?"

 

Yasheka peered out the window, hands curled around her face to shield her eyes from the light. "Tenebar and Dolmar, I think. Last night they were there until midnight."

 

Enrique frowned. "Wait a minute, man. You want to go _now_?" He shook his head. "We're not ready!"

 

The zat--the _other_ zat--was upstairs, stashed in the roof of the linen closet, along with the other equipment. Daniel paused on the first step. "We have no choice now. We go tonight or we die here." And then he forced his aching legs to carry him upstairs, each step a little closer to escape.

 

Janet found him a few minutes later in the closet, standing on top of the second shelf and feeling around in the dusty ceiling tiles.

 

"You're sure about this," she said, putting a hand on his hip to steady him.

 

Daniel blinked, mostly to get the dust out of his eyes, and didn't look down. "You're the one who zatted them, we can't get out of it now." Ah, there it was: his finger brushed smooth metal; he went up on one toe and hooked the zat towards him with the tips of his fingers until he could grab it. The sense of it as he closed it in his hand was disturbingly reassuring.

 

"You have a plan, then?"

 

He handed the radio down to her and then climbed down awkwardly, stumbling a bit as he reached the floor. "Not much of one, but yeah, I have a plan." He paused, looked at her in the light coming in from the hall. She was pale, more silver in her hair now, eyes shadowed with fatigue, face drawn with hunger. But she met his eyes with the old authority.

 

"It's, um." Even now, he couldn't tell her about seeing Jack. "I try to think of what Jack would do, if he were here."

 

She grinned. "Besides mouth off to the Jaffa and get himself shot?"

 

He couldn't help laughing. "Yeah. But at least he'd know what to do. Here I am, trying to think like him--"

 

Janet raised an eyebrow. Daniel shrugged and waved her out into the hall, swinging the jumper cables from one hand. "You can't ever tell him. He'd never let me live it down."

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

He saw Jack for the first time in late October. Stumbling back into the dark dormitory from the unheated bus, hands cramping and eyes teary with cold, Daniel spotted a figure at the edge of the crowd. A man in a baseball cap, taller than most, the line of his shoulders strikingly familiar as he turned away into the darkness.

 

Daniel dodged through the group at the door, pushed between Enrique and Barry, stumbled into the clear where he was sure he had seen the man go. But no one was there. He watched carefully for the next week, but there wasn't anyone in Donner Hall who wore a baseball cap. He didn't mention it to Janet.

 

Daniel chalked it up to exhaustion until it happened again. This time there was no mistaking him: he saw Jack at the edge of the trees from the window of the kitchen, in the early light of dawn. And it _was_ him; Jack leaning against a shabby pine, P90 dangling from its clip, blowing on his hands to warm them. When Daniel reached the trees, three frustrating minutes later, there were no prints in the bare inch of fresh snow, no messages, no radio tucked into a notch of the tree.

 

There was a shout from the front of the hall: soon Janet would come looking for him. Daniel admitted, standing with his head bowed against the thin and sappy bark of the young pine, that maybe he wasn't managing as well as he thought.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

"You want us to do _what_?"

 

There wasn't _time_ for this argument. There probably never would have been, even under the original schedule, but now they really didn't have it. Three hours, maybe, before the shift change. Less than that, if someone noticed Brintal was missing or if the First Prime had told anyone he was going after a member of the legendary SG-1.

 

"We're going through the gate tonight. I need three people to go with me and Janet now. The rest of you should come after us in about half an hour. Move fast, don't bring anything, and for god's sake be _quiet_."

 

Enrique shared a skeptical look with Barry. "Going _where_?"

 

Well, that was the question, wasn't it? Daniel pulled the zat out of his belt and opened it. Barry jumped at the hissing whine.

 

"Some place safe. I promise." No point in telling them what Daniel himself didn't know yet.

 

"That's not--" Barry began to protest, but Anne-Marie put her hand on his arm.

 

"We'll be there, David. In thirty minutes."

 

Easing the front door open, Daniel nodded at the rest of them, clustered hesitantly in the doorway of the common room. "Send out your guys as soon as we clear the way, Enrique."

 

The Jaffa on guard stood about twenty yards from the doorway, leaning on their staffs. There was a small lantern hanging from a post nearby, illuminating the yard and the front end of the school bus looming on the drive. Daniel swallowed and walked out the door, Janet behind him.

 

It felt good to have a weapon again. If he squinted he could imagine Jack was in the shadows off to his left, covering his six as they walked towards the Jaffa. Janet stopped about ten feet from the guards, and Daniel nodded respectfully.

 

"Brintal asks that you join him inside."

 

Tenebar turned his head and frowned. Nice guy, for a Jaffa; not as thoughtful or intelligent as Teal'c, but not _nasty_.

 

"Why does he need us?"

 

Daniel shrugged. "He didn't say. But I can go ask him--" He made as if to go back inside, and Tenebar lifted a hand.

 

"No, we shall come."

 

It was easy, then, to step aside and let the Jaffa lead them towards the door. Tau'ri, after all, could not precede Jaffa. Slaves _follow_.

 

_bbzzzt_ _bzzzt_ _thump_

 

Janet pulled open the door and waved out Enrique. "Tie them up, fast," she hissed. "And make sure you gag them!"

 

While the others took care of the Jaffa, Daniel went out into the yard. No one in sight, and it was a cloudy night; with luck they wouldn't be spotted.

 

"Let's _go_! Come on!" He waved anxiously at the door, and Janet came trotting after one last order to Enrique. She was followed by Yasheka, Barry, and Juan.

 

Daniel led them fast out through the yard, past the bus and the day-car center, and towards the field where Sindle had left the gate. The clock was ticking: Daniel still didn't know how Brintal found out who he was, and the fear that more Jaffa would come for them crawled up his spine, tiny spider-bites sending adrenaline surging through his veins.

 

Yasheka paused in the trees at the edge of the field. "They'll see us out there." She didn't sound scared, just excited. "Are there guards?"

 

"Probably," admitted Daniel. "We won't know till we get there." And he took a breath and stepped out into the open.

 

There were guards, as it turned out. But only two, and the same ruse worked on them. Daniel wondered why it was, with all their technology, the Goa'uld had yet to use long-distance communications effectively. Not that he was complaining.

 

"Please please please," chanted Daniel as he climbed into the cab of the flatbed truck and fumbled around the dashboard. The gate itself was off the truck and onto the ground, but hadn't been raised to its vertical position. Which by itself didn't doom them, but it would make life a little difficult for those going through the gate. Whatever happened, there were bound to be some broken bones tonight.

 

The keys were in the ignition. Daniel decided that just maybe there was a benevolent god out there after all. The truck was a monster 18-wheeler, more than powerful enough for the job. He started the engine, wincing at the roar, and fumbled the complicated gearshift into position. The truck shuddered as he put it into gear, and inched forward in lurches as Daniel brought it as close to the gate as he could. Janet popped the hood before he was even out of the cab, leaving the engine running, and began clipping the jumper cables to the battery.

 

Oh, god. Now he had to remember how Sam had done this. He'd seen it several times, it shouldn't be that hard to remember.

 

The connections for the DHD were at the bottom of the gate, and--oh, good--there were still power cables trailing off it, severed when the gate was pulled out of the wreckage of the SGC. He fumbled the red one, swore at himself, and slowed down. The black one clamped securely around the shattered end of the power cable, teeth grinding into the wires. This had to work.

 

Now he needed help. Yasheka, Juan, and Barry had been standing around, twitching with anxiety, and watching for Jaffa. Daniel directed them as quickly as he could in the darkness. "First clockwise, to this one here. Then counter-clockwise, to that one. Got it?" They nodded in confusion and began the laborious process of dialing the gate by hand.

 

He looked up. The truck was idling, engine running quietly. The two Jaffa had woken up, but were bound and gagged tightly in the bed of the truck, out of sight of the gate. Janet had scrambled up onto the bed, and would warn them if she saw any lights or movement.

 

_Ker-chunk_ The first chevron locked.

 

_Ker-chunk_ Daniel's sweaty hands slipped on the cold metal of the gate. He wiped them against his pants.

 

"Okay, now go back the other way to the one that looks like a fish. No, keep going, right, to there."

 

Daniel could see Yasheka's face now, in the glow of the lit chevrons. He looked anxiously eastward, towards Sindle's house and the windbreak of pines planted along its western side. Would the trees shield the vortex from view?

 

_Ker-chunk_

 

And the next, and the next, and the next.

 

It was going to work. "Okay, now back the other way to the triangle with the dot on it. As soon as we get the last one, back off!"

 

Closer, closer, closer. _Ker-chunk_ And it locked.

 

Shit, they hadn't listened to him. Daniel waved his arms. "Back away! Back away!" Juan and Yasheka jumped back, as the area became awash in blue light. Barry made a shocked squeal as the vortex shot out of the gate and then subsided.

 

It worked, it worked, it worked. Thank god. Daniel was far too aware of the limits on their time. "Go get the others," he hissed at Yasheka, and she scrabbled to her feet and dashed off down the path. Janet dropped down off the truck and came to stand beside him.

 

How long had it been? Had the Jaffa noticed Brintal was missing yet? Daniel squared his shoulders, pushed a pair of nonexistent glasses up his nose, and picked up the radio. "Alpha Site, do you read? Alpha Site, do you read? This is --" he glanced at Janet uncertainly. "This is Stargate Command, over."

 

Nothing. They were dead, they were overrun, this was the wrong address, they moved, he had the wrong frequency.

 

Just as Daniel raised the radio to try again, there was a crackle and a shocked voice emerged from the tinny speakers.

 

"What? Who--Stargate Command, this is the Alpha Site, what's your status?"

 

"Alpha Site, this is Doctor Daniel Jackson of SG-1. Earth has been--conquered, and Stargate Command has been destroyed. Do you copy?"

 

Juan and Barry, hands dirty and faces smudged with grime, gathered behind Daniel. He waved Juan off to keep watch.

 

Another voice now, an older one. "Doctor Jackson, this is Major Redfield. We've been out of contact with Earth since August. Nobody has been able to dial the gate, what happened?"

 

He was gripping the radio so tightly it felt frozen in place. "The Goa'uld struck from space with no warning, Major. Millions, possibly billions, are dead. I can't--I don't have time to give you all the details. We took the gate with a small team, but there's no possible way to hold it for more than an hour. Can we come through?"

 

"Negative, Doctor. You know the protocols. They have to go to the beta site first, and we'll pick them up there."

 

Goddammit! He couldn't believe they were going to insist on this. "No!" Daniel snapped. "You don't understand, I have a hundred people here--_slaves,_ Major, do you understand? Human beings--_Americans_\--who are slaves. And if we don't get them out _now_\--"

 

"Doctor Jackson--" squawked the voice through the radio, but Daniel wasn't listening. Four months of keeping his cool, of holding his tongue, of thinking like Jack because Jack wasn't there to be yelled at--it felt good to let it all out. He was just getting warmed up.

 

"Your _protocols_ didn't stop the Goa'uld from dropping a bomb on every major city on this planet. Your protocols didn't keep them from chaining and killing and starving us. And the _fucking_ protocols won't stop them from taking us out to that big hole on the mountain tomorrow and burying us--" He stopped for a breath and Janet snatched the radio out of his hand.

 

"Major, this is Doctor Janet Fraiser. I am the highest ranking military officer from the SGC left. We are in an untenable situation: we had to dial the gate by hand, the Jaffa will be aware of us soon, and we have over one hundred prisoners who must be relocated immediately. _Do you understand_?"

 

There was a long pause. "Doctor, I'm sorry, like I told Doctor Jackson--you know why the protocols are in place."

 

"I do, Major, and I know you have no reason to believe me. But you know me, Major Redfield: I gave you your physical last spring before you were posted to the Alpha site. Don't you recognize my voice?" Daniel rolled his eyes, but Janet shook her head, her eyes fixed on the gate. Hoping for something.

 

"All right. _One of you_ can come through, but the rest of your people must go to the beta site. I assume you have no GDO?"

 

Janet blinked, her eyes widening. She looked up at Daniel, the radio forgotten in her hand while Major Redfield kept talking. Daniel shook his head and pointed at himself, but she pointed at the gate, making circles in the air. One of them had to stay, had to dial the gate and usher the prisoners through.

 

Janet lifted the radio to her mouth. "I'm ready to go now, Major. But if you don't open your iris I'll go splat."

 

"We're opening it now. Move fast, Doctor."

 

"Roger that." She clicked it off and handed the radio back to Daniel. "As soon as they know I'm clean I'll have them dial up Cimmeria and bring you in."

 

"It could be winter there--"

 

"It's winter _here_. I'll make sure they're ready for you." Janet took his hands and kissed him quickly. "Stay safe, Daniel." Then she turned and ran for the gate.

 

As she rolled through the event horizon, Yasheka came racing up, followed by about ten of the younger prisoners. She staggered against the cab of the truck, panting. Daniel put a hand up for silence and spoke into the radio.

 

"Alpha site, is she there? Did she make it through?"

 

"Yes, she's here, Doctor Jackson. We're closing the iris now."

 

"Okay, we're going to close and redial. See you soon, folks." Daniel leaned into the cab and turned the ignition off; as the engine coughed, the event horizon disappeared. Without the light from the wormhole, Yasheka and the others were mere shapes, barely darker than the emptiness around them.

 

"What happened?" He turned the truck back on, and waved Barry over to the gate to start dialing again.

 

The faint light from the dashboard of the truck illuminated Yasheka's waving hands, pointed back towards the compound. "Tenebar escaped!"

 

Perfect. Daniel grabbed Janet's zat and handed it to Yasheka. "Take this and go back to the dorm, get _everyone_ out. _Now_!"

 

She fumbled the zat; he picked it up and forced it into her hands the right way. "Press here to open it, squeeze here to shoot. One shot stuns, two kills. Go!"

 

She went.

 

_Ker-chunk_ as the first chevron of Cimmeria's address locked.

 

Tenebar would tell Sindle, Sindle would send Jaffa. Would they send them to the gate or to the dorm? Or both? It wasn't as though Sindle had a lot of men; after the first few weeks, a lot of his Jaffa had disappeared. Daniel suspected they'd been only loaned to Sindle, and their masters had required them back for other efforts in the subjugation of Earth. But even five Jaffa armed with staff weapons would probably be enough to prevent this escape. All he had was--oh, he was a moron.

 

Daniel scrabbled around on the ground behind the truck and found the gate guards' staffs. One went to Juan, the other to one of Yasheka's friends, unidentifiable in the darkness. "Go cover the route. Watch for Jaffa."

 

He stuffed the zat into the back of his pants and went to dial the next coordinate in the address. Just five more.

 

They had gotten to four when the shooting started.

 

"Fuck!"

 

The staff blasts were coming from the north, beyond the line of trees between the field and the dormitories. It seemed like there were only a few Jaffa, firing at random in the darkness, and still some distance away, but that couldn't last. Daniel crouched down next to Barry and showed him the last three coordinates. "You okay?" he asked when he was sure Barry had them.

 

"Sure," said Barry, and shuddered as someone screamed in the distance. "Just fine!"

 

Daniel clapped him on the back, a sour taste in his mouth. "Stay low. I'll be back with the others."

 

He ran, sweaty hands slippery on the zat, headed for the woods, on a straight line for the dormitories. Three hundred yards, but it felt like three miles, his lungs heaving, every moment conscious of the Jaffa that could be out there in the darkness.

 

He stumbled into the shelter of the woods and slammed right into Enrique.

 

"David!" The other man supported him as Daniel gasped for breath, then straightened.

 

Daniel realized he was surrounded by people, dozens of them, all clustered in the fragile shelter of this narrow copse. Through the trees he could see three or four Jaffa hunkered behind the school bus. "What are you all doing here?"

 

He didn't have to ask, though; even with almost no light he could see the fear on their faces, smell it in the cold air. He had to be mad, trying to drag these people--schoolteachers, construction workers, nurses and accountants--through a firefight and then halfway across the galaxy. But there wasn't any choice, and it was too late to stop it now.

 

"Listen to me, please, all of you." Daniel raised his voice as much as he could, spoke through the fear tightening his throat. "You can't stay here. They're coming, and this time they're not just going to lock us into the dormitory. _They're going to kill us all._"

 

"But they're shooting--" Natalia's voice trembled. Daniel turned his head, tried to imagine he could meet her eyes.

 

"You didn't hear me. This isn't a guess. They're going to kill us. I've heard them planning it. I've seen where they'll bury our bodies--you've all seen it. What better use for that hole we dug for them? Tomorrow morning they'll load us onto the buses, but this time we won't come back."

 

He could see it now, as he had been seeing it every night for weeks, since the morning he crouched behind a pile of rubble, knees cramping, and listened to Brintal take his orders in fast, idiomatic Goa'uld. This was the weight he had been carrying, that he couldn't share with anyone but Janet, because he couldn't risk anyone letting it slip.

 

Telling them, finally, didn't help. He fumbled his hand onto Enrique's shoulder, squeezed the heavy muscle there. "We have to go. We have to go _now_!"

 

The night was punctuated by the flare of the wormhole opening; the blue light revealed a small cluster of Jaffa off to the south, moving towards the gate. Soon their escape would be cut off.

 

Daniel opened the zat and looked at Enrique, whose bulk sheltered Natalia, Anne-Marie, and so many others. "You lead the way, I'll cover you. When you get there, don't stop, just roll into the gate. And then get out of the way!"

 

Enrique took one step out of the woods, followed by Natalia, and then another, and then began to run. The rest of them streamed after, some slower, some faster. Yasheka stopped to help Anne-Marie, and Chi Hsin practically towed one of the younger men out of the woods. Within seconds there was a long irregular line strung across the field towards the gate, a line that the Jaffa couldn't miss.

 

Cover fire. Daniel stayed at the back of the pack, firing randomly towards the trees behind them. Juan and the others at the gate began to fire as well, raggedly and inaccurately, but it was enough to keep the Jaffa on the south back. Yasheka left Anne-Marie with someone else and fought her way to Daniel's side, but he waved her towards the front of the line.

 

There was a cry: Anne-Marie stumbled, but Chi Hsin pulled her up and they kept moving. Daniel stopped running and leveled his zat, shooting again and again across the field, not aiming, just trying to slow the Jaffa down. What he wouldn't give for a P90 right now. Only a few more minutes, that was all they needed.

 

He glanced over his shoulder: the first of the escapees were already at the gate: Daniel saw a shadow pass through the event horizon. And then a second, and then--

 

"Wait! Wait for me!"

 

Someone came running from another direction entirely, a stocky figure with a flashlight. Harriman.

 

Daniel squinted against the glare of the flashlight as Harriman swung the beam across his face.

 

"Doctor Jackson, please!"

 

The staff fire had paused; Daniel raised his zat. Harriman stumbled to a stop several feet away, gasping for breath. "Please, take me with you!"

 

Daniel shook his head. "You betrayed us, Walter--why should we bring you with us?"

 

"I didn't--it was an accident!" Harriman looked desperate, his eyes wild. "They'll kill me, please!" He was pasty but well-fed, and Daniel couldn't help thinking about the thin broth they'd been eating for weeks. His hand tightened on the zat.

 

But Harriman had been a part of the SGC, practically wallpaper for all the years Daniel had worked there. It was his voice on the loudspeaker announcing gate activations, his voice on the thin radio connection through the wormhole. Harriman had always been there, but he wasn't field personnel, hadn't been through torture and fire the way the field teams had. Daniel couldn't hold him to the same standards as SG-1. And it couldn't have been easy, living in Sindle's pocket for the past few months, balanced on the knife-edge of Goa'uld whimsy.

 

They couldn't save Cassie; but maybe they could save Walter.

 

A staff blast hit the ground by his feet as dark figures emerged from the woods behind Harriman; Daniel swung around and ran. "Come on, then!"

 

There were still about twenty people gathered around the gate when he got there, clustered behind the truck while Juan and Enrique fired at the Jaffa, now closing in from two directions, and in greater numbers.

 

"Why are you here? Go!" panted Daniel as he fetched up next to Enrique.

 

The other man aimed and fired: one of the Jaffa screamed. "They're too scared."

 

It was true: Natalia's face was fixed and glassy, most of the others' about the same. Daniel yanked Natalia forward, out of the limited shelter of the battered truck. "No, no!" she cried, struggling.

 

He grabbed her arms and shook her. "Do you _want_ to die? Then go!" And he pushed her through the gate, hoping as she fell through that she wouldn't land on her head.

 

Then he turned to the rest, and found, to his surprise, that Harriman was helping, urging the stragglers closer to the gate. The rapidly approaching Jaffa pushed where Daniel and Harriman pulled, and soon there were only four of them left: Daniel, Harriman, Enrique, and Yasheka.

 

Three blasts hit the truck in quick succession, and the engine sputtered. If it died, the wormhole would close. It was probably approaching the end of its natural life, anyway.

 

"So now what?" asked Yasheka, as she fired from her position in the bed of the truck. They were nearly surrounded, and the distance from the truck to the gate was only about twelve feet, but it was far enough to kill you.

 

Daniel glanced at Harriman crouched at his side. Harriman nodded. "You and Enrique go. Give Walter your zat, and we'll cover you."

 

"You're sure--" Yasheka dithered.

 

"Yes, go!" He never wanted to give another order again. They went.

 

Fire, fire, turn, fire, fire--

 

Enrique made it through, but Yasheka stumbled. There was a moment when Daniel thought she was okay, she would make it. Just another step, and she'd be free, braids, yellow bracelets, and all. But in that half-second, as she regained her balance, there was another blast, and her head snapped back with the impact. She didn't make any noise, just collapsed sideways, her right arm landing on the rim of the gate.

 

From where he crouched in the narrow shelter of the truck, hidden behind the front tire, Daniel couldn't see Yasheka's face. But the blast had hit her right in the chest, and she wasn't moving.

 

There wasn't time to grieve: the Jaffa were closer now, shouts echoing around them. Soon they'd be surrounded. His hands were cramping around the zat, his knees grinding into the cold ground. "Time to go, Walter."

 

Harriman shook his head, an unfamiliar look of determination on his face. "After you, Doctor Jackson."

 

Daniel looked up sharply. "You're sure." There would be no cover for Harriman.

 

"I am."

 

There was no way to know the price Harriman had paid for his survival to this point, for the food when the prisoners were starving, for the rest when they were worked til they bled. Walter met Daniel's eyes fully for the first time, and Daniel knew it wasn't any of his business.

 

"Okay. On three --"

 

"One." A staff blast shattered the driver's side window of the truck, sending shards flying.

 

"Two." Another blast hit the gate itself, and a ripple of energy ran over the ring, sparking and hissing. The truck's engine coughed and sputtered. Daniel pushed himself to his feet, crouched like a sprinter.

 

"Three--" As Daniel dashed out of the shelter of the truck, driving himself forward, he saw the event horizon itself ripple and sag, but it was too late, he was committed, he was in the air, diving headfirst into the gate.

 

The cold of the wormhole took him.

 

 

+=+=+

 

 

"Ow." The sun was far too bright: Daniel put an arm over his face.

 

He had landed rolling, and avoided hitting his head on the stone platform around the gate only through the barest chance. Which didn't mean he didn't hurt: his back was wrenched, his shoulder sore, and he really wanted to just stay on his back in the sun and let the warmth soak into him.

 

But it was _warm_. He'd forgotten warm, forgotten how it loosened you up, made you want to curl up and purr. Not just the warmth of the sun; as his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized it wasn't winter here. The air was soft, no wind cutting through the thin jacket and thinner shirt beneath, just a soft breeze stirring the brush on the edge of the meadow.

 

Summer in Cimmeria was a shade of green he'd never seen before. The mountains were still snow-capped but the trees and meadow around the gate were fresh with new growth. It almost hurt to look at it, after months of dust, mud, and snow. The kind of hope this green inspired seemed wrong, almost. Disrespectful to the dead.

 

"David!" Barry crouched next to him. "Are you okay? Where's--where's Yasheka?"

 

The prisoners were mostly gathered below the gate platform, looking around in bafflement at the mountains and the trees. Enrique peered under the DHD, as if he were looking for an "on" switch. Daniel lifted a hand, and Barry pulled him upright. He turned around, but he knew what he'd find: the gate was empty, the wormhole closed.

 

"Yasheka--didn't make it," Daniel said.

 

There was no way Harriman could redial the gate by himself, not before the Jaffa took him. If he was lucky, he was dead. Daniel swallowed down a flash of regret. He'd save that for later.

 

"Oh." Barry's face fell. He couldn't seem to come up with anything else to say, and after a few moments, he waved at the mountains around them. "Where are we? What is this place?"

 

A horseman appeared at the edge of the meadow, and then another. Daniel wondered how it was the Cimmerians always knew when someone came through the gate. Something to ask Gairwyn, he thought, when he saw her.

 

Enrique came forward as Daniel walked down the steps to the other escapees. No longer prisoners. Refugees, maybe. Until Janet and the team from the alpha site arrived.

 

"You said this place was safe?"

 

The t-shaped tower at the foot of the platform cast little shadow in the midday sun; Daniel put a hand on it to feel the warmth soaked into the stone. His hand flexed on the gritty surface, fingers tracing the fine ornate lines of Asgard symbolism carved into it. Runes of protection, runes of safety.

 

"Oh, yes," he said. "We're safe here."

 

And he walked out into the meadow, grass soft under his feet, to meet the Cimmerians.

 

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Profuse thanks to my patient betas Katie M and Tripoli, and to Jenlev, Minnow, Salieri, Tafkar, and Hossgal for support and brainstorming.


End file.
